Cloning for the Limited Era Clubs

Breeding Category: When discussing the Leader Boards, a Breeding Category is Top Producing Stallion, Top Producing Mare, and Highest PT of the Year. See Showing Category. 

Eras: Are a way to group horses together with their peers. An Era in the game is 6 months real time, and they start with foundation horses. Learn about Eras here. 

Gene Modification Treatment: An in-game service that allows you to see and modify most of your Horses Genes. The currency used are called GMT's (Gene Modification Tokens). 

Herd Helpers: A way to get a wide variety of genes and combinations in your barn. This is how you create horses. Learn more about HH's here. 

Investment Vouchers: Also called IV's, are another type of in-game currency that can be used for specific things. Learn about IV's here. 

Leaderboard: Also called LB. Is a way for horses to compete in their Eras. Each Era has a Leaderboard with 6 different categories they can compete in. Learn about Leaderboards here.

Showing Category: When discussing the Leader Boards, a Showing Category is Points Earned by Foundation Horses, Points Earned by 2nd Gen Horses, and Points Earned by Lined Horses. See Breeding Category. 

For getting your horses on the Current Era Leaderboard (LB), you should avoid using Exceptional Herd Helpers. Because Exceptional horses are better than most foundation horses, they have an Era penalty as a way to even the playing field. Exceptional horses will always be Red/B Papered, and can also have higher PT (Performance Test Score). For example, if we are on Era 16, all Exceptional horses will be Era 15, and will never be able to compete in the Current Era. 

Try to use Perfect Foundation Herd Helpers (Yellow/C and 9.90 PT), or another Yellow/C Herd Helper with the highest PT possible. This gives you the greatest starting point, without receiving an Era Penalty. You will need at least a Stallion and Mare of breeding age. 

This is a personal preference of mine, but it can make a significant difference in the Top PT category of the Leaderboards. Open up your horse on the Gene Modification Treatment page, and scroll to the bottom where you see Consistency. Even if your horse is Consistent, there is the possibility you can increase their consistency with 1 GMT. Do this for your Foundation Sire and Dam, as well as any Top Offspring or Clones you want to breed. Sometimes it will change, sometimes it will not, so it can be a little bit of a gamble. 

Maxing is different than Boosting (which should be avoided). What Maxing does is looks at the total natural potential from both Sire and Damn, and then gives the foal the maximum potential they could have gotten naturally. This increases their Showing as well as Breeding potential. 

Once you breed your foundation horses, take the Top Offspring to clone. Offspring should be Red/B papered at this point, and have significantly higher PT than their parents. I select the Top Offspring based on PT score. Every time you clone, you're cost increases. For example 1st Clone = 1 IV, 2nd Clone = 2 IV's, 3rd Clone = 3IV's ect. You should expect to Clone 9 times, so your Stallion has a total of 10 offspring in order to get on the Leaderboard. Cloned offspring will have PT equal to or less than the original offspring. You want to select the Top Clones to use for future breeding. Select your Top Two Clones, check for Maxing, and make Perfectly Consistent. These two Clones should be used for breeding when they are of age, so make sure to GMT one of them into the opposite gender. 

Figuring out the costs for this Breeding Program took me 2 months, and 4 different experiments. On the second month of breeding, I created a chart to see where most of my money was going. 

This chart shows the entire Era (6 months of breeding) and up to 3 generations. It follows the entire Era from Foundation Creation, to building up your 4th generation to breed in the following era. It breaks down costs into categories like:

• Breeding Prep: costs of foundation testing and gender reassignment of cloned breeding pair.
• Breeding: cost of live cover and AI. 
• Preparing Foals for Cloning: cost of testing, maxing, increasing consistency, retesting and cloning. 
• Testing Foals: cost of testing foals and increasing consistency.

Breeding your foundation will cost the most, but after that your prices alternate depending if you want to use AI to breed a mare at 3yo or wait until she is 4yo. If you breed using AI you can go into the next Era a generation ahead of everyone that didn't use AI for breeding. 

Key Takeaways

• After 6 months I would have spent over $10 million HBs.
• The most costly investment is Maxing, followed by Cloning, and then Improving Consistency. 

Why Improve Consistency?

While a horse may already be Consistent, they might not actually be Perfectly Consistent. To make a horse Perfectly Consistent, you first need to invest 1 GMT. Then retest your horses PT Score. Sometimes a horse will improve by .10 PT, sometimes they do not. The way the Leaderboards are, a .10 gain can be all the difference in you placing in the Top 3 or not. Using this method of Cloning and making Perfectly Consistent, I have consistently bred 2nd generation horses with a PT score of 10.70-10.80 PT. The Cloning Rule Changes on August 1st, 2024 may reduce this PT score.

As of August 1, 2024 there are new changes to breeding for the Limited Era Boards. You can read the article Ammit published on Bluegrass, Forest, & Mesa for more information. 

There is the potential to earn up to 3 Trophies, 13 Ribbons, and 18 GMT's on the Limited Era Boards. That comes out to $2,250,000 hbs. 

Using the chart under Plan Costs, there is a negative trend in expenses vs. rewards. But there are some factors not present at the moment. 

Key Takeaways

• This chart is only looking at Top Stallion, Top Mare, and Top PT,
• This chart is for 1 Breeding Family (1 Stud, 1 Mare, and 10 Foals). 
• This chart is assuming you will earn 12 GMTs across the 3 Breeding Categories (1st Top Producing Stallion, 1st Top Producing Mare, and 1st-3rd Highest PT of the Year.)
• This should be noted you will most likely not sweep an era like this, so expect to earn fewer GMTs in the Breeding Categories. 
• This chart does not factor in any GMTs earned in the 3 Showing Categories, or HBs earned from Showing. 

Why is Showing Not A Factor?

For starters, I was late to the game when it comes to showing. I started breeding for the new Era on June 23rd and missed out on 3 weeks of earning points. As of July 2024, we only have Foundation and 2nd generation horses competing. Eventually we will have 3 generations before the Era Change. Showing is currently an unknown factor with great potential. Right now you are breeding 2 horses and producing 10 offspring. Of those 10 offspring, your best 2 go on to breed next season, and the other 8 can be gelded/spayed and turned into Show Horses. These show horses should go on to win you GMTs and HBs, if they do they may make up for your breeding program deficit.